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Neo-Nazis gain parliamentary seats in Slovakia

The leftist ruling party has won the parliamentary election in Slovakia, after campaigning on an anti-migrant ticket, but will need coalition partners to form a majority government, according to results announced on Sunday.

In a surprising development, a neo-Nazi party gained parliamentary seats for the first time.

The Assault on Climate Science

State College, Pa. — WITH world leaders gathered in Paris to address climate change, most of the planet seems to have awakened to the reality that the Earth is warming and that we’re responsible.

Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity.

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.

Fewer than one-fifth of middle schools — and half of high schools — are teaching all of the sex education topics recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a new study reveals.

The CDC report found that, for every age group, the least likely topics to be taught were how to get and use condoms.

The results, from the 2013-14 school year, did not surprise Stephanie Zaza, the director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, who oversaw the survey administration. "As far back as I can recall," she says of the low rates of compliance, "it's been pretty flat."

Yusef, who voted for President George W. Bush and called Arizona Sen. John McCain "my number one candidate in the world," has become "disappointed" by the Republican Party's shift to the right."Social conservatism is a moral choice. If you are pro-life, by all means be pro-life. But you can't legislate that," Yusef said.

President Barack Obama "didn't talk about race enough or not at all" and that the #BlackLivesMatter movement is a reminder that "hey, I'm alive too and I have a right to be on the planet just as much as anyone else," Yusef said.

Yusef grew up in a place called "the toxic donut," where the Little Calumet river was polluted as a result of four factories that operated alongside the river bank.

resident Obama’s efforts against the Islamic State should be “sped up and intensified,”

“Those two really do have to be onboard or we have to be onboard with them in terms of priorities,”

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Gates noted, “are united in the fact that Assad has to go before you can make any real progress against ISIS.

GOP governors and lawmakers were quick to announce they wouldn't allow Syrian refugees into their states and are appealing for stronger control of U.S. borders.

people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism," Obama said in Antalya, Turkey, at a meeting of the G20. "It is very important ... that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee similarly heaped pressure on Ryan, saying in a statement: "Speaker Ryan

One: Why now? Why was Guzman, the world's most wanted fugitive, found after six months? While facts are still coming in that will shed more light on this, we have to believe that a deal was cut that made this successful raid possible.

Again, information is still coming in, but we do know the raid was conducted by the FES, Mexican Marine special forces that do not have a reputation of going to great lengths to take prisoners, especially not high-profile targets like Guzman.

Is the "fix" in, as it was the last two times Guzman was in prison and ran his organization from the inside? His first imprisonment was the correctional equivalent of a five-star hotel. He lived in luxury -- prostitutes, movie nights, gourmet meals and parties. He had his own squad of bodyguards armed with baseball bats.

It's a holiday that thankfully has been gaining in recognition since Congress passed a bill and President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1983, designating the third Monday in January, starting in 1986, to honor the civil rights leader. For years, some states declined to participate in the holiday, and Arizona lost the opportunity to host a Super Bowl over it. In 2000, South Carolina became the last state to recognize the holiday.

year that fewer than 40% of American workers are given the day off -- about the same as Presidents Day and far behind the nearly universal observance of such holidays as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day, July 4 and Labor Day.

We remain in a struggle to fight racism, a struggle all the tougher because racism has gone underground or hides its true intentions. Some studies refer to it as unconscious bias.

This Monday, we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.It's a holiday that thankfully has been gaining in recognition since Congress passed a bill and President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1983, designating the third Monday in January, starting in 1986, to honor the civil rights leader. For years, some states declined to participate in the holiday, and Arizona lost the opportunity to host a Super Bowl over it. In 2000, South Carolina became the last state to recognize the holiday.

Had an assassin's bullet not taken his life at the age of 39, King would have turned 87 on Friday.Read MoreHad he lived, I believe King would have continued to inspire hope and would challenge us to fulfill his dream of a more inclusive society -- where everyone would have an equal opportunity for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Not only are we reopening old wounds with regard to confrontation with law enforcement, we are also relitigating everything from voting rights to affirmative action. And now we confront, for the second year in a row, Hollywood -- which somehow ignores the talent of people of color when it comes to the Oscars.

Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historical—it goes back many decades—and, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.

I don’t mean the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison

And I don’t just mean that the Republican Party is led by the boss of a kleptocratic family business who presides over a scandal-ridden administration

Numerous studies have found that voter fraud is far from a major issue in the U.S., and in-person fraud of the sort Trump and Kobach like to talk about — things like non-citizens showing up to vote or people returning to vote multiple times under different names — is vanishingly rare. A 2007 study by NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice memorably found that an individual American is more likely to get struck by lightning than to commit in-person voter fraud.

as of last summer, 68 percent of Republicans thought millions of illegal immigrants had voted in 2016, and almost three quarters said voter fraud happens “somewhat” or “very often.” The same survey found that nearly half of Republicans believed Trump had won the popular vote.

The idea that Nixon gracefully and expeditiously chose not to fight the outcome is a myth, the historian David Greenberg demonstrated back in 2000. Nixon did, however, eventually give in — but in the process, he turned the notion that the Democrats had stolen the election into an article of faith among Republicans, especially conservative ones.

JEFF FLAKE, Senator from Arizona: At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than by our own values and principles, let me begin by noting the somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion. Regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal.

“Ambition counteracts ambition,” he wrote. But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, we Republicans — would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats?

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country, and instead of addressing it, goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.

'I've faced some tough adversaries' Arizona Republican Senator John McCain brushes off a threat by US President Donald Trump to "be careful".

A US Republican senator says he will not seek re-election, delivering a fierce attack on President Donald Trump.Arizona Senator Jeff Flake said "reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour" at the top of the US government was dangerous to democracy.Mr Trump has previously called Mr Flake "toxic".The US president is already embroiled in a row with another Republican Senator, Bob Corker.

He found himself at odds with Donald Trump and the populist, nationalist movement that swept the president to power - and facing a right-wing challenger backed by Mr Trump's former adviser and campaign guru, Steve Bannon.

US Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell said he had "witnessed a speech from a very fine man".Mr Flake has long been a vocal opponent of Mr Trump, refusing to endorse him during the presidential campaign.Although he largely voted in line with the party, his comparatively moderate views and critiques of the direction of the Republicans under Mr Trump have left him out of kilter with voters who made Mr Trump president.

George W. Bush. John McCain. Bob Corker. And now Jeff Flake of Arizona, who delivered a stinging indictment of President Trump and his own party on the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon as he announced that he would not seek another term.

His stirring call to arms came minutes after Mr. Trump concluded a private session with Senate Republicans meant to unite them over their shared agenda.

The four men represent a new type of freedom caucus, one whose members are free to speak their minds about the president and how they see his words and actions diminishing the United States and its standing in the world without fear of the political backlash from hard-right conservatives.

Today’s students bring a multiplicity of personal identities to campus — their sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, religion, political leanings — and they want to see that reflected in course content. The values in readings, lectures and even conversations are open to questioning. All good — that’s what college is supposed to be about — except that now the safety screen around the examination of ideas has been pulled away. Higher education is increasingly partisan, and professors must manage these disconnected ideologies, which are sometimes between themselves and their students.

With so many professors identifying as liberal or far left (60 percent, according to a U.C.L.A. poll last year), it’s not surprising that the right distrusts the profession. In a Pew Research Center survey released in September, respondents indicated on a thermometer scale how they felt about professors. Democrats rated them a warm 71 degrees, Republicans a chilly 46 degrees.

It’s a charged climate and professors know it. The culture wars playing out in the classroom have made them fearful of being targeted.

What has become of the Republican Party, which I once served on Capitol Hill and which I now consider a dangerous extremist movement on a par with the ruling Fidesz party in neo-fascist Hungary?

Where did its principles go? What became of Ronald Reagan’s “party of ideas”?

One by one, those ideas were tossed aside for expediency and power — except the tax cut.

President Trump has announced that transgender Americans will not be allowed to serve “in any capacity” in the U.S. military, a move that could affect thousands of people serving in the armed forces and which resulted in almost immediate pushback from influential Republicans.

Trump’s announcement is the latest in a set of steps his administration has taken to walk back Obama-era policies on transgender Americans. The biggest shift is the reasoning: Rather than framing his decision in the language of rights or morality, as Obama-era officials did, Trump spoke about the new transgender policy in terms of military efficiency. The decision is likely to trigger major blowback from Democratic legislators and LGBT activists who long pushed for full acceptance of transgender service members. It will also bring gender identity back into the spotlight, reigniting a culture-war debate surrounding a president who has tried to sell himself as a friend of LGBT rights.  

While there has not been much research done on this question, according to Rand, policies welcoming lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans to serve openly in the military did not diminish units’ effectiveness. The Rand researchers expected “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness” resulting from Obama’s policy.

The National Climate Assessment’s publication marks the government’s fourth comprehensive look at climate-change impacts on the United States since 2000. The last came in 2014. Produced by 13 federal departments and agencies and overseen by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report stretches well over 1,000 pages and draws more definitive, and in some cases more startling, conclusions than earlier versions.

The authors argue that global warming “is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.” And they conclude that humans must act aggressively to adapt to current impacts and mitigate future catastrophes “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”

“The impacts we’ve seen the last 15 years have continued to get stronger, and that will only continue,” said Gary Yohe, a professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the report. “We have wasted 15 years of response time. If we waste another five years of response time, the story gets worse. The longer you wait, the faster you have to respond and the more expensive it will be.”